Vijay Prashad


Vijay Prashad is an Indian author, journalist, political commentator, and Marxist. He is the executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, editor of LeftWord Books, Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. Ideologically a Marxist, Prashad is well known for his criticisms of capitalism, neocolonialism, American exceptionalism, and Western imperialism, while expressing support for communism and the global south.
Previously, Prashad has been the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and a professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, United States, from 1996 to 2017. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, part of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists.
Prashad has provided reporting and political commentary for several publications, including Monthly Review, The Nation, and Salon.
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Early life and background

The son of Pran and Soni Prashad, Vijay Prashad was born and raised in Kolkata, India. His grandfather was the scientist and translator Baini Prashad. He attended The Doon School as a child. In the United States, he received a BA from Pomona College in 1989 as well as earning a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1994—writing a dissertation under the supervision of Bernard S. Cohn. He is the nephew of Marxist Indian politician Brinda Karat. Prashad is queer.

Political views

Vijay Prashad is a fervent proclaimer of democracy, Marxism, socialism, and communism.
Criticism of capitalism is a recurrent theme throughout his work. In addition, criticisms of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism and other such topics are regular themes.

U.S. foreign policy

Prashad is an outspoken critic of American hegemony and imperialism. He debated historian Juan Cole on the 2011 US-French-NATO military intervention in Libya, which Cole supported. Prashad argued that the genuine Libyan rising had been "usurped" by various unsavory characters, including some with CIA connections. Prashad wrote the 2012 book Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, released through AK Press, on the topic.

Mother Teresa and Western charity

Prashad offered his analysis of Mother Teresa's missionary work in Calcutta, designating her as a representative of the collective "bourgeois guilt" of Western nations. He argued that people like Mother Teresa obscure the tragedies of capitalism. For instance, "During the night of December 2–3, 1984, the Bhopal disaster poisoned thousands of people". He states that the Bhopal disaster, which was caused by Union Carbide, was the most flagrant example of a transnational corporation's disregard for human life in defence of its own profit. In 1983, Union Carbide's sales came to US$9 billion and its assets totalled US$10bn. Part of this profit came from a tendency to shirk any responsibility towards safety standards, not just in India, but also in their West Virginia plant. After the disaster, Mother Teresa flew into Bhopal and, escorted in two government cars, she offered Bhopal's victims small aluminium medals of St. Mary. "This could have been an accident," she told the survivors, "it's like a fire could break out anywhere. That is why it is important to forgive. Forgiveness offers us a clean heart and people will be a hundred times better after it." Pope John Paul II joined Mother Teresa with his analysis that Bhopal was a "sad event" which resulted from "man's efforts to make progress."
In the same article he also commented on Mother Teresa's alleged links with Charles Keating and Michele Duvalier. Denouncing the "cruel rule of capital" he also offered the view that the communists of Calcutta were the "real nameless Mother Teresas who conduct the necessary work towards socialism, for the elimination of poverty forever."

Resignation of Evo Morales

Prashad has written extensively about the removal of Evo Morales as President of Bolivia in 2019 and the 2020 Bolivian general election. He described Morales' removal as a coup d'état and said the Organisation of American States had "legitimised" the coup with unsubstantiated conclusions in its preliminary report. In March 2020, he wrote that Morales' removal from office was the result of his government's "socialist policy toward Bolivia's resources" which required that returns from mining resources such as lithium "be properly shared with the Bolivian people". He said that the government of Jeanine Áñez had extended a "welcome mat" to Tesla to establish a factory in Bolivia to manufacture lithium batteries from Bolivia's reserves.

Israel-Palestine conflict

In 2010, as Prashad was appointed to head the newly formed Trinity Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Trinity College, a group of professors wrote a letter protesting the appointment based on "the prominent role he has played in promoting a boycott of Israeli universities and of study abroad in Israel". After initially refusing to meet with them, Trinity President James Jones eventually met with representatives from Jewish organisations, including the Connecticut Jewish Federation, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford on 14 September 2010. One participant reported a "veiled threat" to have Jewish donors "weigh in". The university backed Prashad and rejected attempts to rescind his appointment.

Persecution of Uyghurs

Alexander Reid Ross and Courtney Dobson, writing in New Lines magazine, said Prashad has argued that the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang does not constitute a genocide. In April 2021, Prashad authored an article for Globetrotter in which he wrote that the diplomatic boycott of China was an American disinformation campaign designed to create hostilities between the two nations, writing "The U.S. government’s information warfare against China has produced the ‘fact’ that there is genocide in Xinjiang... Once this has been established, it helps develop diplomatic and economic warfare." On an episode of The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow, Prashad stated there was no evidence that the Chinese government's actions constituted genocide.
In response to the New Lines article's accusation of genocide denial, Prashad wrote that he had never written about China's treatment of ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim populations in Xinjiang. He said he had commented on a YouTube show that he "did not believe there was reliable evidence or investigation to meet the high legal burden of genocide under international law" and that his remarks corresponded with similar statements by figures such as former UN advisor Jeffrey Sachs and the former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars William Schabas, as well as the US State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser.

Appraisal

Historian Paul Buhle has described Prashad as "a literary phenomenon." Indian writer and journalist Amitava Kumar also praised Prashad, writing "Prashad is our own Frantz Fanon. His writing of protest is always tinged with the beauty of hope."

Criticism

Prashad has come under international scrutiny for his association with Neville Roy Singham, who has been accused of funding and promoting pro-Chinese government messaging and causes via a network of organizations. Prashad has responded to the criticism, deeming it “scurrilous” and characterizing it as an attempt “to conjure a conspiracy from something that is no secret at all” as well as a pretended “scoop based on public statements that I – and others – have made. The … uncovered no conspiracy and had no scoop, only innuendo."

Notable works

As authorThe Karma of Brown Folk. University of Minnesota Press..
As editorCommunist Histories, vol. 1. New Delhi: LeftWord Books.Land of Blue Helmets: the United Nations in the Arab World, co-edited with Karim Makdisi. University of California Press.Red October: The Russian Revolution and the Communist Horizon, New Delhi: LeftWord Books.The East Was Read: Socialist Culture in the Third World, New Delhi: LeftWord Books.
ArticlesJacobin, November 11, 2014. Jacobin, October 9, 2023.
Interviews
  • "" by Paul Jay. A set of 4 interviews conducted on August 2, 8, 9, and 11, 2013. Republished at the Analysis.news. Originally published at The Real News Network.
  • "" by Thomas Hedges, The Real News Network.
  • "" by Mark Nowak in Jacobin.
  • "" by Karthik Purushothaman in Jacobin.
  • "" by Karthik Puru in Jacobin
Talks
  • "", hosted by the People's Forum NYC.